Queensland, June-July 2011

Managed to squeeze in one beer at drinks before being picked up. Made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Had already checked in, so just needed to drop off bags, but no automatic machines that I could see at Canberra airport for plebs, so went to counters to drop off bags. Went into the Qantas lounge for drinks and snackages.

Then Stu got a notification on his phone that flight was delayed. Oh well, more snackages. And delayed again. Flight was nearly two hours late by the time we got away :( Got a beef stroganoff of some description for dinner on the plane.

People please, stand back from the luggage carousels so other people can see the bags going past and actually get to the carousel to pick up their bag!! Sheesh!!

Because the flight was so late, the car rental place was closed. So had to walk all the way back into the terminal to pick up the keys, and back out again. At that time of night it wasn't much fun. And their computer system was down as well. Hurrah.

Finally got the car and headed off, thinking we'd use the toll roads and get there a bit quicker.

Big mistake.

Night roadworks on the M1 meant we were stopped for long periods of time in several places along the motorway :(:(

We had a hybrid car, so the stop start traffic was kinda quiet and fuel efficient.

Finally arrived - very very late - but still ended up talking til around 2am before going to bed.

Friday

Latish on Friday morning we headed down to Springfield Lake for brunch. Although someone misheard it as Bugger Lake and so that's what it then became known as :)

I had a reasonable caesar salad, although all the pieces were in separate sections..

Dropped into the Springfield aquarium and got a new heater for the aquarium, and Chay got a good deal on some plants on logs and a big sunken ship.

Headed out again after setting up the fish tank and went to a few different aquariums looking for fish. We ended up getting eight ghost mollies, six male guppies, four sucking catfish and a betta.

Dinner was lots of Pizza Capers pizza. Then we played Buzz (they have some different Buzzes we don't have, must go looking for them) and SingStar.

Saturday

Saturday morning is garage sale time! Mainly looking for books for Chay's business, but picked up a few other bits and pieces as well. Got some sushi for lunch and saw Batman on a segway!!

Headed back out again in the afternoon and ended up getting some female guppies, and another betta for K (who had picked up a small fish tank at one of the garage sales that morning).

Dinner was chicken pies with mac&cheese - yumm!

After dinner we attempted to watch Seven Samurai but I was restless (so was Chay, who couldn't actually sit there) and then David had to go drop some stuff off at Chay's mum's, so we gave up. Sorry sweetie, I'll watch it with you one day..

So played Buzz again, and more Singstar. Not as late that night, and I set some pretty insane scores (9720 for Where the Wild Roses Grow, 9727 for Come As You Are and a whopping 9837 for Heaven is a Place on Earth!!). Helped being mostly sober I suppose heh.

Sunday

Headed out to our favourite Brisbane cafe for brunch - Ascot Provisions. Driving around I was actually surprised how everything had recovered from the floods. In a lot of places you'd really never know there'd ever been any flooding there at all. Amazing stuff.

I had the big breakfast. They're still doing the mini cheese kranskys (I preferred the bigger ones they used to do).

Saw some interesting things on the drive back.

A staircase to nowhere..

Brisbane CBD from the Story Bridge

And a human aquarium. This is a swimming pool at the top of a building opposite the Gabba, with windows so you can see into it!

Dropped into Hardly Normal to look for Buzz games (didn't find any, but did find this sign)

Did some more shopping at Orion. Found a couple of Buzzes. Also did some food shopping for dinner.

Dinner was a super awesome roast pork and veggies with an amazing apple sauce. I swear David can cook about ten times as well as I can :/ I did my (fake) violet crumble cheesecake for dessert.

Night three of Buzz (the new ones) and Singstar.

Monday

Much of Monday was just chilling out, watching Big Bang Theory, reading news feeds etc. Did a Bunnings run to get some new runners for the front sliding door. Then packed up and left.

Again made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Which was a good thing, because all the new works around the airport terminals, and a truck going down the wrong way towards us in the lane we were trying to drive down, meant we missed the sign to the rental car return (because the truck was in the way). Second loop around we went to a different part of the parking (luckily didn't get charged for the long stay carpark). But we did see the sign this time (after it was too late to change). Third time around we finally got it right. Lame lame lame. Returned the car ok and used the electronic bag drop gizmos for the first time. Took a lot longer than handing them to a human, but I imagine it'd get a lot quicker once you got the hang of what you need to do.

So the plane was delayed. Again. What else is new. We had an hour wait in Sydney on the way back, but as the plane got later and later it was looking like we wouldn't make the connection. So they got us onto the preceeding flight, but even that was going to be cutting it fine. They brought out a beef teriyaki for dinner. We got a lovely view of Sydney as we flew past it, then flew waaaayyyyyy out to sea before finally swinging around and landing from the south on 34R. We finally arrived at the terminal pretty much as the other plane was due to leave. Fortunately it was only four gates down, and several other people were transferring too. So we raced down and got on the plane at the very last minute - they closed the doors a couple of minutes later. I was thinking there was no way our bags possibly could have made it..

Flight to Canberra was pretty quick and uneventful. Took off from Sydney to the west and straight on down, approaching Canberra from the south in very windy conditions. But the landing was a lot smoother than I thought it would be, considering how much we were getting buffeted.

Had to walk out onto the tarmac (love it when that happens :) ) - where we'd just gone from beautiful t-shirt weather to suddenly cold and wet and windy. Craziness.

Went inside and then waited to see if our bags had made it. Which, miracle of miracles, they did!! Was very impressed with Qantas making *that* happen :)

So got home very late and pretty much just crashed.

Had a lovely few days. A nice relaxing weekend, good company, fun times and even read plenty of my very behind news feeds.